Business owner talks about moving on from a failed venture

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    HONOLULU (KITV) — Eric Nedzweckas owns Oahu Construction and Consultants — a firm that’s built commercial and office spaces in Hawaii for about 30 years.

“When COVID hit, we kind of had a few contracts just go away. We lost about $3 million worth of contracts in about 20 days. Just some people just were scared, didn’t want to go forward. So we thought we’d try something new,” he said.

Last April, Nedzweckas heard reports of shortages of personal protective equipment and cleaning products in Hawaii, so he contacted his supplier on the mainland.

“We ordered, you know, masks, sanitizer, dispensers, um, stands, wipes, gloves, everything,” he said. “We bought it at wholesale and we thought we’d be a little bit cheaper than everybody else and see if we could pivot and keep ourselves going through this.”

“We weren’t trying to get rich,” he added. “We were just trying to fill the void for our company and just try to keep everybody busy for a little while and keep everybody working.”

The problem he says — other people had the same idea.

“Everybody was just undercutting everybody, left and right. It just seemed like everybody and their brother just decided to get into it after the second shutdown. And we couldn’t, we just couldn’t make any money,” he explained.

Nedzweckas tried to sell to private companies and state agencies, including prisons, but was told they wanted to stay with their regular supplier, even if it meant waiting weeks and paying more.

“That’s part of Hawaii. I mean, we are loyal to our people that we do business with every day. … I’m not going to hold it against anybody, but that’s the way it is,” he said. “I realized that I have to either abandon trying to do this and put my efforts back into construction or I’ll lose both companies. So at this point, my wife has been out of work since March and we’re just kinda figuring out if we can stay on the island.”

With hundreds of thousands of dollars invested, Nedzweckas decided to sell half of his inventory through an online auction.

“We put pretty much everything we had into it. So at this point, we’re just trying to see what we can get back out of it,” said Nedzweckas, who had to learn a tough lesson, along with other business owners trying to survive the pandemic. He hopes more federal relief coming through another round of the Paycheck Protection Program will give them lifeline.

“We’ll definitely apply and I’m sure we’ll probably get it. It was very helpful last time. It definitely got us through some dark times. That’s for sure,” he said.

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